Ever Ever After
by wizardsong
Summary: MIYAGI/SHINOBU: 'Cause Mr. Charming don't come home anymore.


**rating**: pg.**  
title**: ever ever after.**  
summary**: 'cause mister charming don't come home anymore.**  
pairing**: miyagi/shinobu.**  
author's note**: 100 disclaimed! This is my first Junjou Romantica fanfic.(: I'm sorry if it's OOC. I've only watched the anime, and I think two episodes of Terrorist wasn't quite enough for me to grasp their personalities, ahha.

**e v e r e v e r a f t e r .**

"**I** miss you."

Shinobu's sitting across the dinner table, hands twisting in his lap and head down, eyebrows furrowed and mouth set in a frown--and he's the perfect picture of a petulant child, but Miyagi will never say it aloud because Shinobu will never forgive him, for starters, and neither would his own conscience.

Miyagi coughs slightly into his hand, once, twice, before he looks up from his own dinner plate that he hasn't even begun to touch (Shinobu's cooking hasn't improved much--but he supposes it's okay. They mostly eat takeout nowadays, anyway; Miyagi hasn't had much time to sit at home and stop Shinobu from burning down the house) and he raises an eyebrow. He tilts his head to the head, slightly, and says, softly, slowly, like he's taking to a ten-year-old, "I'm right here."

Shinobu looks up so suddenly that it almost takes Miyagi by surprise. His eyes are dark and he snaps, through gritted teeth, "I _know_ that! Do you think I'm an idiot?"

The older man (by seventeen years, he thinks, oh _god_) opens his mouth to say, _Yes. Yes, I do_, but there's something about the way Shinobu's hands are wringing in his lap, the way his eyes are downcast.

Miyagi sighs and, desperately wanting a cigarette--Shinobu took them away a while ago, said something about them being bad for his lungs and his heart, and it took everything Miyagi was to not say that _Shinobu_ was bad for his heart, giving him goddamned little mini heart attacks every time he smiled or laughed or cried or did anything that wasn't scowling--, says, "What's wrong?"

"I never see you anymore." Shinobu says, without hesitance. He raises his chin a little bit and meets Miyagi's (his _boyfriend_, Shinobu's friends had jeered) eyes with his own.

Miyagi raises an eyebrow, (_again_, he can tell Shinobu is thinking--he can tell by the telltale twitch of his left eye and the downward tilt of the bottom right corner of his mouth), and repeats, even slower, even softer, "I'm _right here._"

Time seems to slow down when Shinobu shoots him _that_ look--_that_ look that Miyagi's sure he inherited from his sister--_that_ looks that says exactly the same thing it said all those years ago. (_Aren't you listening to me?_ is what she'd said, choking on her tears and her anger, her hand pressed against his chest, his _heart_. _Can't you _hear _me, Miyagi?_)

Shinobu slams his fork down on the table--god, Miyagi didn't even know he had that in his hand the whole time--stands and yells, shouts, screams, "How can you just sit there and not say anything?!"

Miyagi opens his mouth and he knows he's making a mistake, he knows he is, but he can't help himself--and he responds, calm and cool and collected, "What do you want me to say, Shinobu-chin? I _am_ here. How can you miss me when I'm _right here_?"

The younger boy (_man_, damn it) looks down at Miyagi and says, softly, in such a quiet, tired voice that Miyagi cannot (_will_ not) equate this Shinobu with the bright-eyed, arrogant Shinobu-chin that came to him so many months ago, declaring absurd things about love and loss and _destiny_, "Because you're not here, Miyagi. You're not."

"And where am I, then?" God, what'd he do for a cigarette.

"I don't know," Shinobu says, walking around the dinner table and around Miyagi's chair to stand behind him, to lean down and to trail a hand down Miyagi's chest, pausing for a second where the older man's heart was beating rapidly, faster faster faster. (His hand feels like _hers_, pressed fast against his heart, pressed hard and tight and _Can't you even_ hear_ me?_)

Miyagi presses a kiss to the crook of Shinobu's elbow before he think any better of it, and it smells like Shinobu, it smells like strawberries and horribly expensive cologne and of something beautiful.

"I don't know, Miyagi," Shinobu repeats, voice soft and low, trailing his other hand down Miyagi's chest and leaning down slightly to embrace Miyagi in a half-hug, an awkward and awful half-hug that leaves Miyagi chuckling slightly at the mental image of them. Shinobu presses a kiss to Miyagi's neck and whispers, against the skin, "Where _are_ you?"

qpqpqp

"He says he misses me."

Hiroki looks up from where he's piling books together--by color or author or title, Miyagi doesn't know. He asked once and Hiroki threw a book at his head once and told him to mind his own business and go back to smoking your cigarettes and _kill yourself, please_. But Hiroki's always organizing sometimes--files or books or papers, always busy with _something._

"Who? Shinobu?"

Miyagi throws him a look over his shoulder and puffs on a cigarette--just because Shinobu stole the ones he had at home doesn't mean he didn't go out and buy new ones. "Who _else_ would miss me, Hiro-kun?" he says, and then, with a sly smirk and moving a bit closer, letting his fingers trail on Hiroki's arm, "Would _you_ miss me?"

Hiroki rolls his eyes and yanks Miyagi's arm off of him not as gently as he possibly could've done it. "Why would he miss you? Don't you see each other every day?" he asks, with a careless, graceful shrug of his shoulders, and Miyagi slams on his back, earning himself a disgruntled _squawk_ and an angry glare.

"See! My point _exactly_. He goes around spouting about _missing_ me and how I'm not--" he stops here to put out his cigarette and to light another, ignoring Hiroki's pointed, _Didn't Shinobu tell you quit?_ and continues without missing a beat, "_there_ anymore! And just this morning, I--he--he just _looks_ at me and says 'have a nice day'. He just _looks_ at me like--I don't understand that bo--guy." (Not a _boy_, he thinks, grimacing a bit, _not a boy._)

"I don't think you're supposed to," Hiroki snaps, sitting up and stretching, closing his eyes and letting out an exasperated sigh.

Miyagi pouts, "But it'd be nice to!"

"It'd also be nice for you to date someone your own age."

"I hate talking to you." the older man snaps, lighting another cigarette, deliberately disregarding the _look_ Hiroki's giving him.

"But you talk to me, anyway, so I guess it really doesn't matter."

qpqpqp

"Did you have a nice day?" Shinobu asks later at dinner, and Miyagi makes a barely discernable noise. Shinobu accepts it anyway with a slight nod of his head and a frown on his face.

Miyagi made it a point to get home early today; Hiroki had rolled his eyes and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like _good luck with your wife. Oh, wait, your ex-wife's little brother_--but when Miyagi asked the younger man to repeat himself, Hiroki had just shrugged and smiled. Which was pretty much eerie in itself, actually.

They're both sitting at the dinner table again and Shinobu's piling out old leftover food they've had in the fridge since god knows when, tossing random food Miyagi can't even recognize onto old china plates and into plastic bowls. "You didn't make dinner today?" Miyagi asks, picking up his chopsticks to pick at something that _looks_ like fried rice but certainly doesn't smell like it.

"I didn't have enough time," the younger man explains, chewing thoughtfully on something that was probably a mushroom but Miyagi really wasn't sure. Shinobu smiles at him, then, suddenly, and asks, "You're not going to eat? It's not _that_ old; I wouldn't give you bad food."

One last look at that thing that Shinobu's trying to call fried rice and Miyagi's not quite sure Shinobu means that, but he doesn't say anything out loud. "What did you do all day?"

Shinobu raises an eyebrow and, after a long pause, proceeds to tell him about school and hanging out with Misaki ("who blushes every time I bring up Usami-san; it's so ridiculous!") and about all of the homework he has to get done soon. Miyagi listens with half an ear and watches Shinobu's hands twist in the air when he describes something he saw walking home, watching Shinobu's mouth curve when he talks about his best friend.

They're not big on small talk, him and Shinobu--Shinobu doesn't have the patience or the attention span to listen to Miyagi talk about _his_ days, boring long days sitting in the office, insulting Hiroki and being insulted by Hiroki, correcting essays and papers and homework assignments, and Miyagi has betters things to talk about that walking home from school or some girl at the coffee shop that was "_looking_ at me! The way _you_ look at me; it was disturbing! Don't laugh, you jerk!", better things to _do_ than to sit here and listen, of all things.

But it's one step into being 'there', of all things, and he hopes that it's making a difference--he's pretty sure it is because Shinobu's smiling at him like he did all those months ago, all bright-eyed and looking star-struck again, thinking about destiny and _love love love_, and it might just be worth it.

"How was _your_ day?" Shinobu asks when he's done talking about Misaki refused to let him read Usami's new BL book.

"It was okay," Miyagi responds, slight shrug of his shoulder, slight shiver running down his spine when Shinobu runs a suggestive foot up his calf, all the while having an innocent, curious look on his face. The annoying, vindictive little _ass_. "Nothing special happened."

Shinobu frowns, an expression Miyagi's comfortable with. "That's boring."

"I'm a Literature professor," the older man says, smiling, "You practically _asked_ for boring when you got involved with me."

Miyagi's _boyffriend_--lover--partner--screw it, Miyagi's _Shinobu_ grins, the corners of his eyes crinkling a little bit. (Miyagi doesn't think the skin of anyone under twentyfive should be doing that, but Shinobu's different--Shinobu's always been different.) The younger man leans forward on the dinner table and whispers, "Well, then. Should I make your life a little bit more exciting, _Professor?_"

qpqpqp

They lay in bed afterwards, Shinobu drawing lazy figures on Miyagi's skin, holding back a yawn every now and then to press a tired kiss to Miyagi's collarbone. The older man runs a hand through Shinobu's hair--and it's this moment that they never talk about in the morning. Soft breaths and soft hands, and Shinobu's hair underneath his fingertips, Shinobu's fingers tracing old scars and bruises that never faded on his skin. They never talk about the _I think I love you_ Miyagi breathes into Shinobu's skin, against his cheek, even though Shinobu smirks at him sometimes, and he knows that Shinobu understood, that Shinobu heard, felt, whatever.

"This isn't a happy ending," Shinobu says, and his voice cuts like a knife through the air.

They never talk during these moments. Miyagi usually runs his fingers through his hair, again and again and again, until Shinobu's asleep, breathing soft and quiet and muttering things in his sleep that he doesn't even try to understand. And then, after a while, Miyagi follows suit and falls asleep, hand still against Shinobu's hair, Shinobu's hand pressed tight against Miyagi's chest.

The older man inhales sharply, a sudden and ugly noise. "I never said it would be." He gets up, pulls away from those hands and that face and those _eyes_. He stumbles in the dark--he could go and turn on the light, make this easy for him, but then he'd have to turn around and see Shinobu in the light--Shinobu with his hair tousled and his lips bruised and god knows Miyagi wouldn't be able to get through this if he had to look at Shinobu like that. He stumbles and fumbles and reaches for the pants that Shinobu had pulled off earlier, stuffs his hands down the pockets for a pack of cigarettes.

"I know you didn't." Shinobu snaps. He's always grumpy, even after sex.

Miyagi lights his cigarette and sits back down on the bed, feeling so very tired and so very old. _I promised to try and fall in love with you._

Shinobu's shifting in bed, probably angry over the fact that he's smoking again (who was the kid kidding, though, he was never going to quit) or maybe frustrated that Miyagi's still not saying anything (what can he say?).

_I didn't make any other promises to you._

"I'm not saying it's a _bad_ ending--" Shinobu starts, sounding very angry and very tired and altogether--just. Not _Shinobu-like_.

"But it is, isn't it?" Miyagi says with a laugh and a stupid smile. He blows smoke up at the ceiling, leaning back against the headboard, closing his eyes. Shinobu does not reach out to touch him and he's glad for it.

_This isn't a happy ending._

Shinobu doesn't respond for a while and the silence stretches on for what seems like forever. By the time he does say something, finally finally finally it felt like Miyagi's heart was going to burst out of his chest it still feels like Miyagi's heart is going to burst out of his chest and lay on the floor, open and bare for Shinobu to play with, Miyagi's cigarette is burnt to a crisp.

"I really hate it when you smoke," Shinobu says, his voice barely a whisper.

"It's my life." Miyagi replies, but there's no bite nor bark in his answer.

Shinobu shrugs, the same kind of careless and graceful lift and fall of shoulders, just like Hiroki's, exactly like Hiroki's. "Doesn't mean I can't hate it," he responds.

"I can't stop," _being who I am_, he wants to say, but the words stick to the back of his throat. "You can't expect me to just stop."

Shinobu leans over and places a hand on Miyagi's chest, Miyagi's _heart._ He takes a deep breath and leans his head against Miyagi's shoulder, smiles a smile that Miyagi feels spread across his skin. "Can't you _feel_ me, Miyagi?"

His heart's going to explode, damn it, and it won't be from the damned cigarettes.

"I'm _right here_, too," Shinobu whispers, fierce and strong, and his hand is pressed tight against Miyagi's chest, his other hand's fingers curled desperately around his wrist. "I love you," he says, "And this isn't a happy ending--maybe it wasn't supposed to be, maybe I _thought _it would be--but maybe that's not our destiny!

Maybe, maybe," he continues, looking up at Miyagi with star struck eyes, "our destiny is to be like this."

Miyagi laughs, pushes his head back against the dashboard and smiles. "Like what?"

Shinobu stares at him for a minute, or maybe two minutes, or maybe a lifetime. Then, his fingers curl around Miyagi's and he wraps his hand in the older man's, and he wraps his body around Miyagi's like a blanket. He says, matter of factly, with a smile, "Like _this_."

"What," Miyagi says, sounding like he's laughing and crying all at the same time, "missing each other when we're both right next to each other? Fighting over nothing but feeling like it's something? Stealing cigarettes from each other? Asking each other about each other's day knowing we're not really going to listen anyway?"

Shinobu blinks, and replies, "Isn't that was love is?" and he leans up to press a soft butterfly kiss against Miyagi's lips.

So, Miyagi thinks, his heart racing underneath Shinobu's fingertips, his fingers winding into this other man's hair, this is what a heart attack feels like.


End file.
